Today I lost it.

Just after a family vacation to the happiest place in the world, two conversations with women looking from the outside in, raving about how much of a “good mommy” I am… I lost it.

Motherhood is a trying time and when you’re mothering a toddler it becomes so much more unpredictable. I’ve read countless articles on how to deal with tantrums, why toddlers have them, what and how reinforce positive behaviors, etc. But the reality is that when they strike a chord all the books and articles in the world about correctly parenting go out the fucking window.

Funny thing is I overheard a woman at one of the Disney Parks this past weekend criticizing parents for not “raising their children anymore”, she then proceeded to tell the woman she was talking to about a parent she just saw lose their cool and how “she NEVER lost it while she was raising her kids.” 

I call B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T!

I highly doubt that there’s any “perfect parent” out there that has had the most angelic child that they’ve never lost their cool with (I know some pretty angelic children and they still have their mischievous moments). Secondly, according my child development professor, that sounds like permissive or uninvolved parenting which is just as bad on the other side of the spectrum. The truth is that parenting is tricky, There’s no one size fits all, there’s not even a one size that fits a child at all times- you really just have to roll with the punches.

When a mom loses her cool the person she is hardest on is herself. You don’t have to beat her up for it because after her 30 second meltdown there’s about 4-6 hours of negative self talk going on in her mind:

Why did I react like that?

My child must hate me.

What could I have done that I didn’t do?

I’m a terrible mom.

We have to do better. Better not beating ourselves up for being human, for learning as we go, for doing the best we can. No one taught us how to raise tiny humans (I mean google has helped a lot) but seriously. Our parents had no idea what they were doing and we turned out okay, right? That’s the thing about life, you get better as you go. You live and learn and parenting is no different.